The department of Natural Sciences is housed on the top two floors of Rome Hall, we have six traditional classrooms and one smart classroom as well as nine fully equipped laboratories.
Biology majors have access to a greenhouse and an aquatic research laboratory. These facilities support undergraduate research collaborations between faculty and students interested in plant sciences, freshwater ecology, field studies and conservation biology. Students also have access to an updated advanced chemistry lab and several field research facilities.
Connor Museum
The Robert T. Connor Museum houses more than 200 animal mounts. It includes species endemic to Georgia and the southeastern US, as well as specimens from Africa and South America. Most of the mounts have been donated from the collections of four Georgians: Dr. R. T. Connor, Mr. and Ms. Robert Wilson, and Mr. Arnold Dorfman. The museum opened in August 1985, after Ms. Connor donated her late husband’s collection. Since then over 3,000 guests, mostly school children on field trips, have visited the museum.
Stergus Pathology Collection
This very unusual collection includes over 250 specimens of diseased human organs. The late Dr. Ingrid Stergus, a Rome pathologist, donated the specimens to Shorter College in 1975. The collection contains every organ in the human body and is housed in Rome Hall.
If you are interested in a tour of the Connor Museum or the Stergus Collection for your school group, please contact the Department Chair, Dr. Clint Helms at 706-233-7265 or chelms@shorter.edu.
Marshall Forest
Shorter University is adjacent Marshall Forest, a 311 acres Nature Conservancy Preserve. This forest ranges in elevation from 600 to 900 ft. and is one of the few remaining old-growth forests in the Ridge and Valley Province, a corridor that extends from Pennsylvania to Alabama. It is home to hundreds of plants and animals and serves as a “natural laboratory.”
Many of our biology courses have field components which take student into the forest to experience the natural environment first hand. Moreover, faculty in collaboration with students are currently conducting research on the ecology of amphibians and plants of this forest.